


Breakroom Blues

by firelord65



Series: Tales from the Pit [11]
Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, shortfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/pseuds/firelord65
Summary: The coffee machine breaks and that's just not acceptable. Dauntless marches on its stomach. Or rather, its caffeine.
Relationships: Eric/Tris Prior
Series: Tales from the Pit [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011174
Kudos: 7





	Breakroom Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Trashaddendum prompted: Someone versus an appliance in the common breakroom.

“Do you want me to call Richards?”

Eric glowered up at me, grease smeared on his cheek and hands. “Absolutely not,” he growled.

I lifted a shoulder, unaffected by his foul mood. He had been playing around with the coffee maker for the past ten minutes, taking apart the appliance piece by piece. It was a shadow of its former self, a victim of Eric’s screwdriver and insistence that he knew how to fix the drip system. I perched on the counter next to the debris, drawing up a requisition form for a new one - or rather, new to us since everything was secondhand most of the time.

Kyle would have a field day with getting Candor’s financial gremlins to sign off on the “non-essential” appliance. If they had spent any mornings with Eric or Veronica pre-coffee, they might change their mind about how essential a functional coffee maker was.

“Anything I can do to help besides sit here?” I asked. A plastic piece snapped as Eric over-tightened one of the screws.

He fumed under his breath and threw his hands up in the air. “Fucking hell, why is everything so complicated?” Eric snarled. I slid off the counter and tugged the screwdriver out of his hand.

Resisting the urge to laugh - that would only set him off more - I hip checked him gently until he moved in front of the fridge. “Now it’s your turn to watch and learn,” I teased. Most of the other pieces were still in tact. I could coax the broken piece into place with the other intact screw holes. Once the water reservoir was repaired, I could attack the actual brewing part where I suspected the issue actually was.

Eric warned me that he’d already tried that part and I gave him a withering glance. “You’re going to do that Divergent thing where you can, like, magically tell what’s wrong, aren’t you,” he groaned.

Shaking my head, I stabbed the tiniest screwdriver in the kit around the bottom of the drip system. Crunch, crunch. “That’s not how it works and you know that. You just didn’t look in the right spot,” I retorted.

“Sure feels like it’s magic,” he muttered, not quite under his breath. I could feel what plastic felt like with the metal probe and where there was something foreign. The screwdriver clinked as I threw it into the toolkit. Chewing on my lip, I flipped the whole coffeemaker over and shook it. Coffee grounds and a loose washer fell onto the countertop.

Giving it another hard shake, I watched a solid chunk of brown _something_ fall from where I’d been probing. “Success,” I cheered.

Eric leaned against the fridge, skepticism still splayed out on his face. “I’ll believe it when I see it, Prior,” he said. My response of sticking my tongue out at him wasn’t mature, but it certainly felt warranted. A few more minutes of reassembly and securing the washer where it was supposed to be was all it took to have the counter clear and the coffeemaker in one piece.

I opened the cabinet overhead and jumped slightly to grab the coffee filters. Eric smirked at that and I made full eye contact with him while reaching over him to get the coffee can on top of the fridge. “If its so funny that I’m so short, you can at least offer to help get things,” I said.

He lifted one shoulder, still smirking. “You’re a tough girl. If you need help, just ask. Otherwise, I’ve learned to stay out of your way,” he said.

The coffeemaker gurgled as I plugged it back in and filled the water reservoir. Eric expressed one final question of “You think that’s all it needed?” I stared pointedly at him until it finished cycling. Steaming hot coffee hissed as it dripped and then flowed perfectly into the mug I’d placed underneath it.

“See, we didn’t need Richards,” he muttered, taking the mug. I patted the top of his hand and set about putting the toolkit back under the sink.

“That’s because you had me,” I retorted.

His head dipped down and he planted a kiss on my cheek. “Thank God for that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Previously a part of the "Tales from the Pit" compilation fic on my profile. Moving all of these to their own pieces in a series instead so they can be more accurately tagged on their own.


End file.
